Rissalah College

Rissalah College upgrades IT infrastructure with ASI Solutions.

Founded in 1997, Rissalah College is an Islamic school based in Western Sydney. The College strives to deliver holistic education, coupled with human values, in order to create the best possible learning atmosphere, enabling them to attain their full potential through appropriate and diverse learning opportunities.

Rissalah College occupies the premises in Lakemba which it moved into at the beginning of 2011. The college today has 508 students which is a great feat considering its humble beginnings in 1997 with only 64 students. Rissalah College’s vision is to provide the best comprehensive education program of all six Key Learning Areas as stipulated by the NSW Educational Standards Authority (NESA): English, Mathematics, Science and Technology, Human Society and Its Environment (HSIE), Creative Arts and Personal Development, Health and Physical Education (PDHPE).

The Challenge

ASI Solutions was approached in early 2017 with the task of completely transforming the IT infrastructure of Rissalah College, Sydney. The school’s Principal, Naslie Styer, had the vision of transforming the school to be the most technically enabled Islamic School in Sydney. Working with Rissalah College’s IT Manager, Mohmmed Shaikh and Principal Styer, ASI Solutions examined a range of solutions and environment builds that would enable the College to live it’s vision – to provide the best comprehensive educational program.

While Rissalah was keen to completely transform their IT, keeping the budget under control was also very important. ASI Solutions were able to add value, not only financially but also in terms of level of service.

The Solution

ASI Solutions was tasked to complete the transformation project within a 4 month period finishing in December 2017, ensuring when students and teachers alike came back to school in 2018 they were enabled like never before.

ASI Solutions adopted a consultative approach during project scoping and leveraged long standing supplier relationships and presence in Education to save the college thousands of dollars in hardware and services costs.

To make the transition easier for teachers, ASI Solutions held two Promethean ActivPanel training days which were further complimented by an additional two Apple Professional Learning sessions with ASI’s National Education Training Manager, Grania Pourbozorgi. National Education Manager, Michael Eggenhuizen and Education Account Executive, Haroon Rashid spent numerous days on site and were readily available to support and advice teachers and students on using the Apple iPads and Promethean ActivPanels.

The scope of work included a complete upgrade from projection units to Promethean ActivPanels which required the removal of old projectors, installation, configuration and staff enablement for the new panels. This extended further to include advice around access points, fibre networking, switches, storage, managed services for firewall maintenance and management.

The Benefits

ASI Solutions worked closely with Rissalah College through the entire project life-cycle from discovery to implementation and training resulting in an extremely positive customer experience and ongoing partnership. Collaboration was key to the success experienced. ASI involved industry experts from a technical and enablement perspective throughout the project to ensure all education applications were implemented and working as per the school’s needs.

In order to continue to further integrate STEM learning into the classroom, ASI Solutions is continuing visits to the school to ensure their IT journey is on track, be it technical support to ensure system updates are installed seamlessly or ongoing professional development and training for the teachers. ASI Solution’s depth of industry experience meant we were able to provide guidance and solution sets that not only addressed the immediate challenges but also ongoing support to introduce STEM learning into classrooms.

Every student at Rissalah College has access to an Apple 32GB Wi-Fi iPad which is fully interactive with the Promethean ActivPanels in all classrooms. All classrooms are equipped with a sturdy trolley where the iPads are stored and charged.